MEANWHILE - Sharpton in LA to take on cops, Hollywood

greenspun.com : LUSENET : Current News - Homefront Preparations : One Thread

Friday November 16 7:03 PM ET

Sharpton Comes to LA, Will Take on Cops, Hollywood

By Dan Whitcomb

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - New York civil rights leader, Rev. Al Sharpton, who is considering a run for the U.S. presidency in 2004, said on Friday that he will open a Los Angeles branch of his National Action Network to fight racism in the city's police department and in Hollywood.

Sharpton, speaking to reporters at a press conference outside the Hope Community Reformed Church in south-central Los Angeles, said his decision to establish a beachhead on the west coast had nothing to do with his possible presidential bid.

``This is about the film industry, the record industry and the police department,'' Sharpton said. ``If I run for president, that's three years down the road. I'm not trying to run a popularity contest, I'm trying to run a movement.''

Sharpton, who spent the summer in jail after an illegal protest over the U.S. Navy's use of a bombing range on the Puerto Rico island of Vieques, said he wanted to empower the black community in Los Angeles and take a ``hands-on approach'' to achieving racial equality in Hollywood.

``We want to confront them in a coast-to-coast, grass-roots kind of way,'' Sharpton said. ``We're not interested in charity, we're interested in parity. We're interested in our people being treated fairly and being treated squarely.''

Sharpton said he would bring a bare knuckles approach to his activism in Los Angeles, criticizing other civil rights leaders, who he declined to name, as having ``gone corporate.''

The 47-year-old Brooklyn, New York, native said his organization had brought the issue of racial profiling to the nation's attention and would be just as effective in taking on the Los Angeles Police Department, which has been mired in scandal for years.

And Sharpton said he would not tread lightly with LAPD Chief Bernard Parks simply because he and his predecessor, Willie Williams, are both African Americans.

``We will fight against anybody we disagree with, black or white,'' he said. ``We're not fighting for the right to be brutalized by a black cop, we're trying to stop the beatings.''

The LAPD is still reeling from the so-called Rampart Station scandal, where officers patrolling one of the city's poorest neighborhoods were accused of beating, framing and even shooting innocent people.

That scandal broke as the department was still recovering from the black eye it received over the beating of black motorist Rodney King by white officers, whose 1992 acquittals sparked some of the worst urban riots in America.

-- Anonymous, November 17, 2001


Moderation questions? read the FAQ